PHOENIX - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday that most people
who cross into Arizona illegally are being used to transport drugs,
an assertion that Border Patrol officials said is wrong and that
numbers don't seem to support.

Brewer said the motivation of "a lot" of the illegal immigrants
is to enter the United States to look for work, but that drug rings
press them into duty as drug "mules."

"I believe today, under the circumstances that we're facing,
that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into
the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of
organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in," Brewer
said.

"There's strong information to us that they come as illegal
people wanting to come to work. Then they are accosted and they
become subjects of the drug cartel," she said.

Observers contested her assertions.

"Unless Governor Brewer can provide hard data to substantiate
her claim that most undocumented people crossing into Arizona are
'drug mules,' she must retract such an outrageous statement," said
Oscar Martinez, a University of Arizona history professor whose
teaching and research focuses on border issues.

"If she has no data and is just mouthing off for political
reasons, as I believe she is doing, then she must apologize to the
people of Arizona for lying to them so blatantly."

The governor is right to emphasize the involvement of drug
cartels in human smuggling, but her numbers are wrong, said Brandon
Judd, president of the union representing Border Patrol agents in
the Tucson Sector.

"The vast majority of those whom we arrest are not smuggling
drugs," said Judd, who heads the National Border Patrol Council's
Local 2544.

Tucson Sector spokesmen could not say Friday how many arrests
agents make for drug crimes. However, there have been 170,873
apprehensions of illegal immigrants in the Tucson Sector so far
this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, and federal prosecutors in
Arizona have filed 1,107 drug prosecutions in the same period.

Brewer's comments came Friday when asked about statements she
made in a recent debate among Republican candidates for
governor.

"They're coming here and they're bringing drugs, and they're
doing drop houses, and they're extorting people, and they're
terrorizing the families," she said during the June 15 debate.

Late Friday, the governor's office put out a statement
emphasizing that drug cartels have taken over human smuggling along
the border.

"The simple truth is that the majority of human smuggling in our
state is under the direction of the drug cartels, which are by
definition smuggling drugs," Brewer said in the statement.

Sen. Jesus Ramon Valdes, a member of the Mexican Senate's
northern border affairs commission, called Brewer's comments racist
and irresponsible.

"Traditionally, migrants have always been needy, humble people
who in good faith go looking for a way to better the lives of their
families," he said.

Illegal immigrants do sometimes carry drugs across the border, a
Border Patrol spokesman said, but he couldn't provide numbers
because the smugglers are turned over to prosecutors.

"I wouldn't say that every person that is apprehended is being
used as a mule," said Mario Escalante, and agency spokesman. "The
smuggling organizations, in their attempts to be lucrative and to
make more money, they'll try pretty much whatever they need."

Brewer's comments were "an oversimplification of reality," a
spokesman for a human rights group said.

"We have some stories of people being forced to carry drugs,"
said Jaime Farrant, policy director for Tucson-based Border Action
Network. "We disagree with the assessment that people are crossing
(to carry drugs). We have no evidence that's the truth.

"We think most people come in search of jobs or to reunite with
their families."

On April 23, Brewer signed a controversial new state immigration
enforcement law that will take effect July 29 unless blocked by a
court. Five legal challenges are already pending in federal court,
and the U.S. Justice Department may file its own challenge.

The Arizona law requires police officers enforcing another law
to question a person's immigration status if there's a reasonable
suspicion that he or she is in the country illegally.

Francisco Loureiro, who has run a migrant shelter for more than
20 years in Nogales, across the border from the Arizona town of the
same name, said Brewer's comments are aimed at turning the people
of Arizona against migrants and strengthen support for the state's
new immigration enforcement law.

"That governor is racist and she has to look for a way to harm
the image of migrants before American society and mainly before the
people of Arizona," Loureiro said.

Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star contributed to this
report.

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